Alok Jha meets the celebrated scientist Craig Venter, one of the world's leading biologists. Dr Venter has made numerous contributions to genomic research and is a pioneer in the emerging field of synthetic biology. In May 2010, he made headlines around the world after creating what he called "the world's first synthetic life form" by putting together an artificial chromosome and inserting it into a single-celled bacterium.

Venter was the keynote speaker at this year's European Science Open Forum at which he updated a very influential lecture in the history of biology. In 1943, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave a series of talks at Trinity College in Dublin entitled "What Is Life?". These were published a year later as a book and focused on an important question posed by Schrödinger: "How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?"

Schrödinger's lecture inspired James Watson and Francis Crick in their work unravelling the double-helix structure of DNA, and this discovery in turn kickstarted the field of molecular biology.

Venter's talk was titled "What is Life – a 21st century perspective" and afterwards he spoke to Alok about his lecture and the expanding science of synthetic biology.